Hey, Herd 👋
Welcome to the very first Among the Herd devlog. We're a small indie team making a cute-creepy herding game, while sharing the entire process online, one video a day. Every Friday you'll get the week summarized here, along with what was built, and what we learned.
TL;DR
Daily videos are live on our social platforms.
Illustrator, Markilus, created amazing concept art for us.
A placeholder shepherd is walking around in Unreal, and we're blocking out the level and trailer.
The first playable level is sketched, and the Game Design Doc v1 is underway.
This week, day by day
Day 1: It begins
A shepherd, a sheep, and a whiteboard full of ideas. We kicked off with the team on a call, mapped out the plan, and started posting our progress on a daily basis.
Day 2: Finding the look
We found Markilus, an illustrator whose work has exactly the weird charm we were after. We sent him reference and let him cook. He came back with sheep and monsters.
Day 3: Into the engine
A mannequin shepherd, and a low-poly hillside. This is the previs stage, where we plan the trailer before anything gets pretty.
Day 4: Rough to polished
Markilus took his rough sketches all the way to polished concept art.
Day 5: The first playable level
A hand-drawn map of the demo level: a river, a bridge that's out, a disguised wolf, with a wolf reveal. Plus a core loop in a design doc: explore, keep your sheep safe, overcome the world. The more sheep you bring home, the better you did.
So what is this game?
You're a shepherd. Monsters (goblins, aliens, a shadow man, a bush that is definitely not a bush) try to scare and eat your flock. Spot a monster and it flees. That one move keeps the monsters back and the herd together. Think Pikmin for the feel of leading a crowd, Cult of the Lamb for cute on top and creepy underneath.
Things to Explore
We love the tilt-shift, locked camera look. However, a fixed camera may mean building more levels than we planned. We'll work that out further when we start building a playable, and we'll tell you where we land.
Next week
Level layout, and beat map in Unreal Engine
Sheep herding mechanic, and shaders exploration
An art style guide and our first target look frames
Meet the team
Three industry veterans with close to 20 years each, and we've shipped together before. Now we're building something of our own.
Felix Jorge, Creative Director & Producer
Emmy-winning art director who built the virtual art department on The Mandalorian and helped bring game engines into film on The Jungle Book. Felix founded and ran a 100-person Unreal Engine studio, creating photoreal films, theme park rides and interactive experiences. More at felixjorgecreative.com.
Corey Johnson, Game Director & Character Artist
Corey built characters at Naughty Dog and Cloud Imperium, but his real gift is how he thinks. He's a storyteller and a systems mind in one, always asking who a character is and how they'll play. He never runs out of ideas, and he's the reason our monsters are both adorable and deeply unsettling.
Gaige Hallman, Technical Art Director
Gaige just wrapped four years at Riot Games, most recently managing technical art for Valorant's Agents. Before that he built character pipelines at Singularity 6 and rose to Lead Character Technical Artist on Star Citizen at Cloud Imperium, where he and Corey first shipped together. He makes everything move, look and feel right in engine.
Markilus, Concept Artist
The Swiss illustrator behind our concept art. His weird, wonderful style is the look of the herd. Follow him on Instagram at @markilus_.
Join the herd: we're looking for a Game Designer
We're looking for a game designer to join the team and help shape how Among the Herd plays. Know someone great, or think it's you? Hit reply and let us know.
So, Question.
Which fantasy monster would you want to scare your sheep with? If you comment and let us know, we’ll make sure to reply.
See you next Friday,
Felix and the Among the Herd team